19 April 2014

Anger, Hatred, and Identity: Anzaldúa and Lorde's Marginalized Bodies

She becomes a
nahual, able to transform herself into a tree, a coyote, into another person.
She learns to transform the small "I" into the total Self.

Gloria Anzaldúa

Judith Butler argues
that "identifications are multiple and contestatory" which is a
statement that both Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde discuss considerably within
their poetry and theory. In fact, Anzaldúa and Lorde's texts focus almost
entirely on questions of identity.For
both authors, anger and hatred begin as an external emotional reaction from
other individuals which is then internalized for a marginalized body. This
common act of internalization is discussed as a primary element that shapes
identity.According to these authors, marginal
bodies become silenced and invisible through their fragmentation by a masking of
difference or/and the white washing of history/myth.Both authors recognize several ways for a
marginalized body to be seen by those who would try to make such a body
invisible and silent through their writings.

How do bodies
become marginalized? In Sister Outsider,
Lorde identifies what she calls a "mythic norm" which is found
"somewhere, on the edge of consciousness."She explains in our culture the mythic norm is
identified as "white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and
financially secure," and if you do not identify with any part of this
norm, you know that the mythic norm is "not me." The mythic norm is
important because, “It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power
reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often
identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the
primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around
difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing.”

Audre Lorde

Not only does
the mythic norm help create marginalized bodies, but it is one of the starting
points for those individuals who do not reflect it to begin self-fragmentation.
This succeeds in creating a self-induced silence that many individuals do not
even recognize, which mirrors the silence that other members of society place
on a marginalized body.

This is
similar to sentiments Anzaldúa utilizes in La
Frontera to discuss the beginnings of the "new mestiza"
consciousness. She writes, “Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two
cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems, la mestiza undergoes a struggle of
flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. Like all people, we perceive the
version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living
in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages.”

Like
Lorde's idea of the mythic norm, Anzaldúa's mestiza has several versions of
reality/norms which are contradictory and with which an individual within that
culture is suppose to identify. To identify exactly with any one of them would
be next to impossible for an individual enmeshed in more than one culture.

Anzaldúa and
Lorde have similar answers for this problem; using identities that embrace
multiplicity, even to the point of being seen as contradictory. They take
"the freedom to carve and chisel" their "own face" in Anzaldúa's
words. These multiplicities in identity help combat the fragmentation that can
silence and make individuals invisible. As Lorde explains, “My fullest
concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts
of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to
flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the
restrictions of externally imposed definition.”

Gloria Anzaldúa

Definition of
self brought by self-design (and not those preordained by specific parts of our
cultures) that is inclusive of all the elements of an individual is one way to
resist fragmentation. Anzaldúa and Lorde are resignifying the words that identify
them--Anzaldúa by claiming the "new mestiza" as her identity and
Lorde through her insistence that identifying as a "Black lesbian feminist
socialist mother of two" is more inclusive.

In Bodies that Matter, Butler states that
"Neither power nor discourse are rendered anew at every moment; they are
not as weightless as the uptopics of radical resignification might imply."
Yes, power and discourse are not weightless, but they are subject to
change over time. Besides this, the immediate goal of resignification is not to
change the discourse of a society as much as it is to give those living as
marginal bodies a way to reflect themselves in a positive light to (and
amongst) themselves. Resignification becomes a way to use what in the current
discourse of the mythic norm would be considered a “derogatory term” in a
personally powerful way by someone within a marginalized body. The personal
positive use of these terms often lead to their eventual change in connotation
amongst the larger cultural discourse as well—a byproduct of the act of the
resignification. The countless examples of former “derogatory” slang terms that
are now utilized as neutral (even academic) terminology attest to the larger
impact resignification has been proven to create. The fact that both Anzaldúa
and Lorde's texts have been so highly influential since their publication
speaks to the fact that their call for resignification hit a chord amongst readers.

Both Anzaldúa
and Lorde are poets who pepper their theory/prose with poetry, identified as queer
and talk of the difficulties this created in their interactions with the
homophobic society under which they lived, and use the straightforward language
style most often associated with non-academics. The similarities show that
these two authors are expressing the same concerns in many of the same ways in
their work. One of the main differences between their theories on identity
comes with Anzaldúa's emphasis on identity's connections to language and
finding your identity through geopolitical space.

In "How
to Tame a Wild Tongue," Anzaldúa states "Ethnic identity is twin skin
to linguistic identity" and that "if you really want to hurt"
someone "talk badly" about their language, (59). By making a person's
language(s) illegitimate, you are making their ethnicity illegitimate as well.
Anzaldúa enacts this theory within some of her poems, most notably in "We
Call Them Greasers." The persona within the poem, an English
speaking male (most likely white), uses the Spanish terms
"ranchos" and "mañana" in a contemptible, insulting way to
the people he is trying to swindle out of land. Also, since within his actions
in the poem we are assured he thinks of these women and men as less than human
and his laughter at the fact they did not understand/speak English, we can
infer he sees their language as illegitimate. In fact, in stanza three we see
an actual event that shows that the language these people speak is seen as
illegitimate.

Oh,
there were a few troublemakers

who claimed we were the intruders.

Some even had land grants

and appealed to the courts.

It was a laughing stock

them not even knowing English.

Even with
proper documentation, because their language was not seen as legitimate, these
"troublemakers" lost their land to the persona. Like the unfortunate
“greasers” in the poem, anyone who does not comply by speaking and
understanding the cultural norms of the un-marginalized are “troublemakers.”Anzaldúa's focus on language and place in
regards to identity makes perfect sense to her readers that experience the
reality of living in two or more languages/cultures. Written from a code-switching
troublemaker to speak candidly to other code-switching troublemakers, La Frontera legitimizes personal
experience with language in a similar way to Gertrude Stein. The major
difference is the political ramifications of both Lorde’s and Anzaldúa's work
are much more overt.

Shauna Osborn is a Comanche/German mestiza who works
as an instructor, wordsmith, and community organizer in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. In 2013, she received the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry from
Alternating Current Press, a National Poetry Award from the New York Public
Library and the Native Writer Award from Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. You
can find her online at shaunamosborn.wordpress.com.